


More than Kin, Less than Kind

by elviaprose



Category: Hamlet - Shakespeare
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-26
Updated: 2013-07-26
Packaged: 2017-12-21 10:17:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/899139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elviaprose/pseuds/elviaprose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Hamlet" viewed slantwise through the eyes of King Hamlet's ghost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	More than Kin, Less than Kind

Sticky silt and clotted earth tumbled towards the heavens. The clinging tendrils of his fog curled themselves around the explosion, and, for a moment, all was a chaos of bursting flame and earth and smoke. Then, things calmed down, and he found that he was still furious. There was something, he mused, about having a corporeal form that made one better able to control one’s anger, and making the ground explode wasn’t as satisfying as it looked. He had an excuse to be wrathful, though. Really, he did. 

He drew his scattered vapors back into man shape and shouted something at the thin, black clad figure in front of him, watching the pale boy watching him. He noticed him tangle his hand in his soft blonde hair and pull at it—a mannerism he shared with that damned Claudius. 

“Alas, poor ghost!” The boy cracked out in his reed voice. His face was bloodless, and it was all the king could do to resist frightening the boy to death as retribution for his inborn cowardice. But he had other plans, so he kept talking. 

***

“That conversation went better than expected,” the King thundered to the empty sky. Three crows took flight from a barren branch, and rain began to fall, making the soft moss on the bulbous tree roots slick and clammy.

***

The journey to England made him very tense. He felt best in the early hours of dawn, after spending the night whispering insanity into the boy’s dreams, but even that—and the occasional pleasure of driving the gulls mad so that they flapped in tight, shrieking circles—was not enough to really improve his mood. The prince, that conniving little machiavel, was caught with a sudden fever of purpose, and he melted crimson wax and folded bits of parchment, trading his own sorry life for the lives of his friends. The king ruffled the ocean’s froth in disgust and anger.

***

He had little part in Ophelia’s madness, but this, too, suited his purposes admirably. Was it arrogant to think that he held Fate between his perpetually dissolving fingers? He laughed beneath the earth as the fair girl’s angry brother and the coward prince fought in her shameful grave. Really, things were going quite well. Quite well, indeed.

***

After that, it only took a few more days. Poison tipped swords sang against each other, and more poison simmered in the wineglass on the table. Poison, poison, poison—the remembrance would have made him wrathful again, but there was a certain poetic beauty to it all, which soothed his seething temper. 

And then, a red line slashed itself into the craven boy’s skin, and time unraveled like slippery thread. The fool prince was as good as dead. Claudius’ stolen queen tumbled to the ground, her neck long and white, and her hair gold against the black stone. The prince’s sword jerked into Claudius’ ribs even as fingers, trembling with poison, forced wine into the false king’s mouth. The ghost would have smirked, but that was not a mannerism he favored. He found it unkingly. Instead, he contented himself with roiling and contorting his smoky form in vengeful joy. Gertrude, Claudius, and their bastard brat Hamlet were finally dead.


End file.
